The lecture notes describe media influences during world war I and II on terms of westerb civilization using films, novels and pictures. Such as the Schrindlers list, All Quite on the Western Front and Grapes of Wrath while the books include Night, Hiroshima and all quite on the western front and p...
History 201. Term 1. Week 1. Lecture 2. 17 February 2015.
Introduction to the course
Examining the relationship between history and fiction
There are issues concerning truth and representation. Tim O’Brien was a graduate that was
drafted in 1958. O’Brien had studied politics during his undergraduate years. O’Brien was
opposed to the war but did not have the moral strength to stand against it or defer from the
draft but instead he went and served. When he returned from the war the public mood about
the war had shifted into negativity. He had wrote about the war concerning his war
experience. His first book was called “if I die in a combat zone box me up and send me
home.” Drawing the line between fact and fact and winning prices for it. The second Going
After Cacciato novel told the story of a soldier that rebels against the war with references to
historical facts. In the late 1980s he published a short story called “how to tell a true war
story” and in 1990 “the things they carried” which is a collection of story’s that closely
resembles his actual life, featuring a series of hot stories that are seemingly senseless. Their
main focus is in relation to the Vietnam War and leading to the question of what does one
expect from a war story. Showing that a war story cannot make sense because even it makes
no sense. Tim O’brien “A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage
virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behaviour, nor restrain men from doing the
things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war
story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from
the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is
no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a
true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.” This
observation raises the question of whether or not humankind is capable of morality and
goodness in times of war. O’Brien makes a distinction similar to that made by Ernest
Hemingway. They make a distinction that there is a distinction between story truth instead of
reality truth. Story truth is emotional truth that resonates with our reality by connecting us
with the human experience. There are certain human experiences that ring true regardless of
time and space. Fiction can therefore have a stronger impact on us than history books that
might take on a positivist’s point of view. Fiction then teaches us. We can distinguish
between a novelist truth and a historian’s truth. History deals with narratives competing
because historians invest of different perspectives. They have different truth claims trying to
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,represent the past truthfully and accurately and this is where multiple perspectives come in.
There is no absolute truth. History has a form a relativisms where people can ignore certain
facts, however, history does have ways to question versions of the truth and relativist point of
view. Different historians make different truth claims using the same facts and evidence. The
novelist truth has a notion of (artistic/literary) truth in fiction and is credible. Fiction can be
true to life in the form of experiential truth or it can ring true in the form of emotional truth.
Historians’ truth is different because we recognise history by contrasting it with other
narrative forms and not by measuring it against and objective standard of truth.
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,History 201. Term 1. Week 1. Lecture 2. 18 February 2015.
All quiet on the western front
Historical novelists similarly conduct research in archives such as historians do for example
Purt Barkers Regeneration Trilogy is a historical reconstruction where she uses narrative to
invent characters that become part of actual historical events. This was done through her
immersing herself in the records and the facts which she used to reconstruct a historical
narrative. Therefore their methodology is similar to that of historians. Both historians and
novelist employ narrative to tell a story. There are similarities between fiction and history
both assume that story telling is a way of knowing that knowledge of the world is largely
framed by narrative. Both employ an intelligible structure which governs the succession of
events in a story through time and space. Both engage the reader by means of the sequential
disclosure of events, chronology nor necessary linear but at least coherent. Ultimately history
does tell the story of change over time.
The practice of history was once dominated by a positivist methodology of Van Ranke that
history could tell the story as it actually happened. But the idea that realities of the past could
be constructed has been debunked by historians such as Hyden White. The distinction
between history and literature is an artificial one. Literary theory taught historians to
recognise the active role of language, texts, and narrative structures in the creation and the
description of historical reality. There is not a one to correspondence between language and
reality-words are signifiers they stand for certain things but they do not simply represent
reality, the words we create are only a representation of that reality. However, there are
constraints that historians face that novelists do not. They do not invent speech or characters,
they do not have that licence. They do not invent what does not exist in historical records.
Historians are formal rather than substantive and their work resides in the relative weight
given to constructive elements. The expectations of the author and the historians are different
the reader accords a novelist greater artistic licence to create an imaginary but convincing
historical world. Moreover, historical narratives compete for the same space and we are
judged against each other on the basis of how well they represent the past to a contemporary
audience, whereas narrative fictions do not displace each other but rather occupy their own
spaces unencumbered by the obligation of truth claims. There are certain truths that novelists
can alert us to which teach us about our human condition
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, History 201. Term 1. Week 1. Lecture 2. 22 February 2015.
Photographs
The definition of iconic an image of spiritual meaning mean to inspire faith. Photograph
refers to all digital imagery still and moving, a visual image that is produced to the
registration of reflected light and recorded medium. However, this definition that does not
acknowledge the role of the photographer as a subjective part of making photographs.
Photographs frame reality- isolate the subject matter as part of a broader context. They
reproduce reality. They capture a single moment is the sequence of time. Therefore there is a
complex relationship between photography and reality. Photographs are subject to editorship.
Captions frame our reading of a photograph. Second definition: a photograph is a subjective
representation of a particular event determined by the photographer’s representation and
composition. Third photographs are representations which reflect a fidelity through a
photographer’s world. Key questions: how much subjectivity enters the process? How much
selection is involved?
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